Dr. George Spratt--A Letter and a Lost Friend

One More Chapter on the Wrights Invented What?

"After having for twenty years capitalized upon this as your own work I do not see how you can give a correct account of this without bringing yourselves into open censure"--Dr. George Spratt to Orville Wright, 1922, on the development of the Wright flyer.

Dr. Spratt as an Inventor

A control wing aircraft built in 1939 by Dr. George Spratt's son, using the doctor's designs

The concepts behind Dr. Spratt's amazing control wing invention were beyond Wilbur Wright's understanding, as is clearly revealed in his letters to the doctor. Contrary to what we are taught, it was Spratt's ideas that the Wrights used to build their wind tunnel. Link here to great Youtube videos of Spratt's control wing in flight and a few derivations of his invention.

Dr. Spratt's Relationship with the Wrights

An early friend of the Wright brothers, Dr. George Spratt wrote his last letter to Orville Wright in 1922. See it below. Was it it an expression of sour grapes or a statement of the betrayal of a once loyal friend? You be the judge. I've emphasized some of the copy, so it's obvious where I stand. As you read today's Wright "history," as it was carefully pruned and shaped by the Wrights, look for the explanations and rationalizations they write for primary documents, such as this letter. It would seem that Dr. Spratt was wrong when he said "It makes little difference what you write, history writes itself."

Dr. George Spratt was another of the pioneer aviators, who like Edward Huffaker, came to Kitty Hawk in 1901 to help the Wrights, at the request of  Octave Chanute. Like Huffaker and Chanute, Spratt freely provided the Wrights with suggestions and help.

Wilbur publicly admitted early on that both Spratt and Huffaker had educated him on the movement and reversal of the center of pressure as a plane changes its angle of attack. But neither Wilbur nor  Orville repeated that admission any time later.*

 In 1901 at Kitty Hawk, the Wrights had warmed to Spratt, unlike Huffaker (see previous blog post), and they invited him back in 1902 and 1903. A lively correspondence sprang up between Wilbur and the doctor and information was exchanged. However, when the Wrights began their insults to early aviation by suing anyone they thought infringed on their 1906 glider patent, Spratt's response began to cool. Further, Spratt requested recognition for his important contributions to the Wrights' wind tunnel tests and later asked for help in building his "control wing" plane.Wilbur wrote back that it was enough that he had sent Spratt tables from the wind tunnel tests and shared information of his own. They were square and he owed him nothing.(What?)  It is now established that the Wrights wanted the world to believe that their research was theirs and theirs alone--a myth that came to prevail..

Eventually, the friendship with the Wright brothers soured to the point that Spratt no longer would answer their letters.

 Dr. Spratt's Stinging Last Letter to Orville Wright

Much later, in 1922, Orville Wright wrote Spratt for copies of the brothers' letters they had written to him over the years-- (he also tried to acquire Wilbur's letters to Octave Chanute that were in the possession of his daughters after his death.) Orville was apparently compiling his version of the early history of aviation.

 The following letter is Dr. Spratt's response to Orville's request in its entirety. Those who are interested in truth in aviation history need to read this letter carefully:

Wilbur and Orville Wright Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.**

Dr George Spratt's last letter to Orville Wright. Emphasis is mine.

 For much, much more about the Spratt/Wright saga and Dr. Spratt's contributions to the Wright flyers, go to this link: http://www.gustave-whitehead.com/history-of-whitehead-critics/wei%C3%9Fkopf-verkannter-erfinder-oder-scharlatan-gibbs-smith-luft-raumfahrt-jan-1982-pp-8/don-paulson-on-wright-spratt/

* I have been since informed that Orville admitted some twenty years later Spratt's and Huffaker's educating the Wrights about the movement of the center of pressure. I will have to research this.

**This letter can be found in "The Wilbur and Orville Wright Papers" under Series, General Correspondence, Items 214, Images 16 and 17.

To be continued...

The Wrights Discovered What? Another Chapter

Was the Wrights' "original" research original?

The aspect ratio of the wing

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”-Galileo Galilei 

"There are no secrets." Glenn Hammond Curtiss

Gull in flight. Credit NOAA

Wilbur Wright became seriously interested in aeronautics after Otto Lilienthal, the great German aviation pioneer, lost control of his glider and died from the crash in 1896. Lilienthal's glider experiments had brought him just to the point, it's said, that he planned to attempt manned, powered flight.

Otto Lilienthal in flight. Credit: National Air and Space Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution

Apparently, Wilbur saw the opportunity to continue where Lilienthal left off. Accordingly, he stated his intention, when he wrote to the Smithsonian for information in 1899, to take the level of aviation at that point in time and "add his mite." To read aviation history, however, and the court battles the Wrights instigated in 1909 to establish their intended monopoly, the Wrights pioneered the "secret of 
flight," starting when Wilbur began his aeronautical investigations.

 Research in aviation history is difficult at the very least. It's full of complicated aeronautical concepts and mathematical formulas, and it's a whole lot easier to accept the Wright version of history. "First to fly, did all their own research with their wind tunnel, Kitty Hawk, 1903, geniuses, etc"--fairly easy to learn sound bites. Advertisers and politicians use sound bites all the time if they want to sell you something, or worse, to make you believe something that might not be totally true. By the time Wright biographies exploded in vast numbers, most people believed that the Wrights' sound bite version was gospel, anyway. In fact, maybe it was the sound bite that the Wrights discovered! It certainly wasn't the "secret(s) of flight." The corrected Smeaton's coefficient, the function of the aspect ratio of the wing, and the travel forward and reversal of the center of pressure were studies  pioneered before the Wrights by Professor Samuel Pierpont Langley. See John David Anderson, Jr.*

The aspect ratio of the wing is the length of the wing in proportion to the width. Professor Langley's experiments published in 1891 showed that a longer narrower wing ( high aspect ratio), as opposed to a shorter, wider wing (low aspect ratio)' is more efficient in lift. The long, narrow gull wing pictured below, lower right, is designed by nature so that the bird can efficiently soar and glide long distances.

When Wilbur, who determined to learn aviation, wrote the Smithsonian in 1899 for information about the state of the art; the Institution promptly sent pamphlets and recommended books on the current published knowledge in aeronautical research. Among them were two publications by Professor Langley and one by Edward Chalmers Huffaker. See letter and notes below.

From the Library of Congress digital collection

Notes on the back of letter "copy" above. From the LOC digital files

In the "copy" of his thank you letter, above, we can see that Wilbur orders Professor Samuel Langley's 1891 publication called "Experiments in Aerodynamics" for one dollar. I have provided you with the link that will take you to Langley's publication, complete and digitized online, which is a primary source of Langley's early experiments,  Here we have, fully documented, Professor Langley's experiments and conclusions on the aspect ratio of the wing in chapter V, page 26, "The Plane Dropper."--These are the plane dropping tests that John David Anderson refers to on pages 171-173 of "A History of Aerodynamics." *  Selected quotations from Anderson's book as follows:.

   "Another novel device designed by Langley was his plane dropping apparatus....The most important finding from Langley's plane-dropping tests was that a wing with a high aspect ratio would produce more lift than a wing with a low aspect ratio..."Anderson page 171

 "Wenham had preceded Langley in appreciating the aerodynamic efficiency of high-aspect ratio wings, but Langley was the first to produce an organized set of experimental data clearly showing the superiority of such wings." Anderson page 172

         " An irrefutable demonstration that high-aspect ratio wings were superior to low-aspect ratio wings, and by approximately how much, was good enough for Langley, and that determination was one of his major contributions to applied aerodynamics." Anderson page 173

But in the 1943 Fred Kelly biography "The Wright Brothers,"** authorized by Orville Wright, we have a description of some of the discoveries the brothers claimed they made from their wind tunnel tests in 1901--ten years after the publication of Langley's report. Among them, see below:

On page 76 from "The Wright Brothers" by Fred Kelly***
 

The trials of the 1902 glider p 79 of The Wright Brothers by Kelly

Success of the 1902 glider, Kelly p. 80

With changes to their 1902 glider, particularly the aspect ratio, we see that the Wrights achieved more successful flights than in the disappointing trials of 1901. As noted above, they attributed their success to their wind tunnel tests and their discovery that the higher aspect ratio would provide more lift.

However, at least one of the aviation pioneers who was at Kitty Hawk in 1901 knew better. It was Edward Chalmers Huffaker.The Wrights ignored or downplayed input by Edward Huffaker and Dr.George Spratt in 1901 whereby they very likely would have been informed of the need to remodel their glider.

  Edward Chalmers Huffaker had worked for Professor Langley at the Smithsonian and conducted Langley's experiments on cambered (curved) wings. Anderson pp 188-190. Even if the Wrights didn't read or understand Professor Langley's treatises, which they had in their possession, or trust his conclusions, as some say, Edward Huffaker would have shared knowledge with the Wrights in 1901 when he was with them at the Wright camp near Kitty Hawk .

Wrights also downplayed Langley's research by saying that Langley's studies were only on flat planes, so his experiments didn't help them.The truth is that Langley's published work at that time was on flat planes, so they could later get away with that statement (and historians believed them). But it's a little known fact that they had access to Langley's unpublished work on curved surfaces and other research through Huffaker. 

  Before the Wrights' secrecy, it was quite common for pioneers to share their knowledge. Also, Huffaker was a brilliant theoretician, and he had explained the Bernoulli principle regarding flight--how the flow of air over a wing provides lift--even to Langley. This is arguably one of the most important concepts leading to flight by man. See "The Unwelcome Assistant" by Hensley.

It wasn't the Wrights who originated the early knowledge regarding the function of the shape of the wing.They might have used their wind tunnel tests late in 1901 to verify for themselves much of what was already known, but verifying earlier discoveries is not the same as making the discoveries--as they claimed. 


 

Borrowed from the Tennessee Aviation Network. Thank you

 

 http://tennesseeaviation.net/HallofFame.htm

 













A reader of Fred Howard in "Wilbur and Orville"*** needs to take note of his unacceptable insults and belittling of Edward Huffaker per the Wrights in chapter 8. In fact, they sound like those of a fishwife in a spiteful marriage.  Huffaker was shiftless, unconscientous, and sloppy, they said. He spit tobacco and read with his feet on the desk. What's more, he never changed his shirt. Who cares? Does anyone know whether Newton chewed tobacco or Galileo changed his underwear? But many readers of this Wright "per-version" of history (some might call it) then, will tend to dismiss Huffaker, and many aviation pioneers other than the Wrights, because, as I can demonstrate, the Wrights verbally assassinated their competitors in one way or another, discredited them, their knowledge, and their contributions to aviation. They did it in a way that it sticks. It even crept into John David Anderson Jr.'s book. Sound bites.
 
Further, in his book "Wilbur and Orville,"*** Fred Howard, states on page 132 that Dr. Samuel Pierpont Langley's only contribution to aviation was the flights of his models in 1896. This is  a complete contradiction of the facts. But it is the version of history that the Wrights wanted you to believe. (See previous post.) Like many/most Wright historians, Fred Howard didn't do his due diligence. He simply accepted the Wright statements, seriously neglecting his homework on the Wrights' fellow aviators, including Langley.

Launching Langley's model aerodrome
Edward Huffaker was likely there.

Aviation pioneer Samuel Pierpont Langley

To conclude this post, the Langley history has been perverted by the Wrights, as has the history of many, many other pioneers, including Edward Huffaker and Dr. Spratt (see future post) who were both at Kitty Hawk in 1901. Why? It seems obvious that the true contributions of these pioneers clashed with the Wrights' desire to be remembered as the primary inventors of the airplane and as the first to fly. Note that when Judge John Raymond Hazel's court awarded the Wrights victory in 1913 in their patent infringement lawsuit against Glenn Curtiss, the Wrights were declared by Judge Hazel to be "pioneer inventors" and thus entitled to a broad interpretation of their 1906 patent. This meant that the Wrights" system of warping the wings for lateral control could be equated with Curtiss's system of ailerons because both systems achieved basically the same function, even though the Wrights never thought of ailerons to control their airplanes and didn't mention them in their patent. Therefore, even though ailerons were a vast improvement over wing warping and they have been adopted by planes ever since, and even though planes as a rule have discarded wing warping altogether, Curtiss was declared an infringer of the Wright patent of wing warping.

To be continued.... 

 *Anderson John D., Jr., "A History of aerodynamics and its impact on flying machines," Cambridge University Press, 1997. Page numbers provided are from this edition.

 **Kelly, Fred, "The Wright Brothers," Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1943

***Howard, Fred, "Wilbur and Orville" Ballantine Books, 1987

The Wrights Discovered What? Was the Wrights' "Original" Research Original?

Smeaton's Coefficient:

The Little Number with a Big Difference 

  “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants--Isaac Newton

"There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before."--Isaac Asimov 

In 1896, with Alexander Graham Bell looking on, Samuel Pierpont Langley's steam powered,  model "aerodrome" successfully flew 3/4 of a mile. Launched again, it flew once more, nearly as far as the first time.

Quantico, Virginia, 1896. The successful flight of Professor Samuel Langley's unmanned model--
six years before the Wrights' claimed manned flight of 1903

" I was myself a witness of the memorable experiments made by Professor Langley on the 6th of May, 1896, with his large-sized model which had a spread of wing of about 14 feet. No one who witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of a steam-engine flying with wings in the air , like a great soaring bird, could doubt for one moment the practicability of mechanical flight. I was fortunate in securing a photograph of this machine in full flight in the air, so that an automatic record of the achievement exists...." Dr. Alexander Graham Bell  

************************

But with the exception of Otto Lilienthal, the Wright brothers gave little or no credit to the aviation pioneers, such as Samuel Pierpont Langley, whose genius, innovation, research, hard work, and sometimes lives brought aviation to the point where man could take off into the skies. They gave virtually no credit to their contemporaries who helped them.The Wrights dismissed most of them as failures. 

The Wrights took the credit for themselves. They claimed that it was with their own research that they built the first heavier than air, manned, powered plane capable of flying. They went so far as to say that they had invented the airplane. Their assertions were trumpeted in the courts, in the press, and in their documents.

Whether the Wrights were really even first to fly may be debated for some time longer. It's not at all likely they were. There is much more evidence in the form of valid witnesses, for example, that aviators, such as Gustave Whitehead, preceded them.  See previous posts. When the Wrights really flew is another point that should also be on the debate table. The only so called "proof" we have is their word and only theirs, that they took off from "level ground" in 1903 "with engine power alone." All other evidence, including witnesses so far, points to the fact that they needed the assistance of the hill to take off. The alleged photograph that appeared in 1908 is highly questionable. Compounding the evidence is the fact that the next year at Huffman Prairie near Dayton, Ohio, the Wrights increased the horsepower of their new flyer's engine over that of the Flyer I, but couldn't reliably get off the level ground there. Without the hills near Kitty Hawk, their take offs in Dayton needed the assistance of a catapult and in addition to that, a headwind. As late as 1908, they were still relying on their catapult, whereas Glenn Curtiss and Alberto Santos Dumont were already taking off from level ground with wheels and the power of their engines.

 

The story the Wrights told about their trips to Kitty Hawk is retold in many books and accounts. A quick read of the legend can be found at the Smithsonian site titled, "The Wright Brothers, The Invention of the Aerial Age." But the Smithsonian assertions about the Wrights' inventions, research, and discoveries are more than questionable.

Some serious digging will show that two of the aviation pioneers whose research benefited the Wrights were Octave Chanute and Professor Samuel Langley, contrary to what the Wrights said and their historians, such as Fred Howard in "Wilbur and Orville," have repeated. 
 
In 1901, as the story goes, Orville and Wilbur returned to Kitty Hawk with a new, larger glider from the one the year before. They also had visitors that season, Dr. George Spratt and Edward C. Huffaker, who came at the suggestion of Chanute. Note that the Smithsonian website doesn't mention their presence that year, but it's very important to the history. Please see future posts.

The tests with the new glider were so disappointing that the Wrights considered dropping their aeronautical experiments altogether. One problem was that Wilbur found they didn't get near the lift he had predicted from his mathematical calculations, using Lilienthal's tables and Smeaton's coefficient. Smeaton's coefficient was an important number that had been first calculated by an English engineer named John Smeaton, who built windmills way back in the 1700's. Smeaton's number was .005

But Smeaton's wind mill blades were flat, not curved or cambered. His famous coefficient was for flat surfaces like his windmill blades. Moreover, Lillienthal's method of calculating for lift was for his own particular wing and didn't rely on Smeaton's coefficient as the Wrights thought. Please see John David Anderson.*

The Wrights mistakenly decided that Lillienthal's tables of lift and drag were wrong. But they also questioned Smeaton's coefficient.

So the Wrights went home to Dayton after their 1901 glides and decided to do their own experiments. If they couldn't trust the figures of the experts like Lilienthal, they said, they would find the right numbers on their own. They built a relatively crude wind tunnel at their shop powered by a gas engine.. In it they tested a large number of small wing shapes (air foils) to see what lift and drag they could predict.The Wright brothers attributed much of their success to their two months of wind tunnel tests Oct.- Dec.of 1901.

Wright historians state that the Wrights' discovered that Smeaton's coefficient was wrong for cambered (curved) wing shapes. Unfortunately, evidence doesn't support that claim. It wasn't the Wrights.

First of all, in Chanute's book Progress in Flying Machines, 1894, he states on page 172  that  they would probably have to modify Smeaton's coefficient from .005 for curved surfaces. The Wrights had acquired this book, because it was recommended by the Smithsonian per Wilbur's request for information in 1899.

Professor Samuel Pierpont Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian

But even if the Wrights didn't carefully read Chanute's book, another pioneer had worked on the problem and already solved it. Professor Samuel Pierpont Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian, was a proficient scientist who had done many years of research on the problem of flight. He had successfully built and launched his amazing heavier than air, steam powered model that flew 3/4 mile as early as 1896--three years before the Wrights began their studies in aeronautics. Langley had proven with his research and his successes that heavier than air flight was possible. Professor Langley's new number for Smeaton's coefficient had been established as .0033.

Steady as she goes.  Professor Langley's amazing steam powered model 

takes to the air. Note the curve on the wings.

But here we have the following statement from the Smithsonian website The Wright Brothers, under "Correcting Smeaton":

"A key term in the lift and drag equations was Smeaton’s coefficient, which accounted for the density of air. A value for the coefficient of 0.005 had been widely used since the 18th century. Using measurements obtained from their glider tests at Kitty Hawk and the lift equation, the Wright brothers calculated a new average value of 0.0033. Modern aerodynamicists have confirmed this figure to be accurate within a few percent." (emphasis mine)

It's difficult to imagine that a respected scientific institution like the Smithsonian would make such a false or misleading statement, but it likely originated out of prejudice and bias pro Wright. Nevertheless, the Smithsonian statement and attribution are clearly erroneous. It was not the Wright brothers', it was Professor Langley's experiments and calculations for cambered surfaces that resulted in the nearly correct value of .0033 for predicting lift and drag.  According to John David Anderson, Langley's value of .0033 is "very close to the modern value of  0.0029 established by the Royal Aeronautical Society...--a testimonial to his experimental technique." See Anderson, A History of Aerodynamics, page 169.* Were the Wrights aware of Langley's number? Absolutely verifiably so. Wilbur wrote a letter to Chanute on 26 Sept, 1901 (See Library of Congress digital collections) in which he stated the following:

 "...Professor Langley and also the Weather Bureau officials found that the correct coefficient of pressure was only about 0.0032, instead of Smeaton’s 0.005...”.

And, according to Anderson, page 221*, the Wrights used Langley's number. To give this assertion more credence, if the correct number calculated by aeronautical engineers today isn't quite .0033, Langley was slightly off. That the Wrights would come upon the identical slightly off number using measurements from their gliders or their crude wind tunnels is practically absurd. In my opinion, the odds against it would have to be huge.

Continuing research will uncover that the Wrights and their historians have claimed for themselves
 more of the significant areas of  Professor Langley's research, such as the effect on flying of  the "aspect ratio" of the wings and the travel of the center of pressure. Please see future posts. It's time that aviation history is corrected and Langley's greatness be recognized again.

Orville and Wilbur Wright were bicycle manufacturers, with no high school diplomas, and still "wet behind the ears." They had just begun their aviation studies in 1899. Chanute's and Langley's research had been going on for over a decade. Orville would later state that he and Wilbur had garnered no assistance from the research of Professor Langley. They would also say that Octave Chanute had only provided moral support. See Fred Howard's "Wilbur and Orville."

The wrong isn't that the Wrights built on the research of others. That is as it should be. The wrong is that they didn't give the others credit and even worse, that they claimed the others' discoveries as their own.

To be continued....

*Anderson John D., Jr., A History of aerodynamics and its impact on flying machines, Cambridge University Press, 1997. Page numbers provided are from this edition.

John David Anderson, Jr., is Professor of Aerospace engineering at the University of Maryland and special assistant for aerodynamics at the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian. Professor Anderson's book provides new insights to Professor Langley's research through his access to Langley's laboratory notebooks, on file in the Ramsey Room, the rare book room of the museum. However, in my opinion, he relies too heavily on the publications of Peter Jakab, Tom Crouch, and others for his historical conclusions. These are mostly a rehash of the Wright brothers' claims, many of which have never been truly verified.






                                                                

More "Errors," "Inaccuracies," and "Whoppers" by Orville Wright in "Boys' Life"

Wilbur Wright dies.

Wilbur Wright died of typhoid on May 30, 1912. The world was stunned.  By the time of his death, it had been accepted by many over the world that the Wrights were the first to fly as they had claimed. But it was Wilbur who had made the only possible flight December 17, 1903, that was long enough to be considered "sustained"--852 feet.

From a New York Times article  after Wilbur Wright's  death

 

Soon though, with Wilbur no longer alive, it's easy to see that his younger brother, Orville, stole his title of "first to fly." We can see that in the Sept.,1914, Boys' Life article, where Orville claimed that he was the one who had made the flight of 852 feet. However, he wouldn't have been able to stick to that story--even though it's still being published by Boys' Life. So probably with Orville's help, the unsustained "flight" of only 120 feet that Orville really made became accepted as the "first flight."

Monument and plaque at Kitty Hawk pictured below commemorate Orville Wright as first to fly. These were created and dedicated after Wilbur Wright's death.

This photo autographed by Orville is supposed to be of the "first flight of 120 feet that he claimed in Boys' Life was made by Wilbur. Note that it's clearly Wilbur who is standing beside the plane. Also note level ground, level rail, no hills in sight.

It might appear that I'm giving undue attention to the Boys' Life article by Orville Wright. But there are many other significant statements in that article that are not true and that continue to be repeated in history a century later.

I have already repeated  the first of the errors, "inaccuracies," and downright "whoppers" by Orville Wright in the article. He admits only number 1 and number 2 to Mr. Max J. Herzberg in 1942. (See complete letter to Herzberg at end of post.) I'm noting these and others in this list as follows:

1. Orville's claim that he made the longest flight of 852 feet on Dec. 17. Orville couldn't very well continue with this claim because it became well accepted from the brothers' own documents and reports that Wilbur made that "flight," and that Orville made the first "flight"of only an estimated 120 feet. But long before the letter written to Herzberg in 1942 ( below), the public had come to believe that Orville's first flight of 120 feet was a true flight. (manned, powered, controlled, sustained). He was now lauded as "first to fly," whereas before Wilbur died in 1912, Wilbur wore the crown. (See
N. Y. Times quote at beginning of this post.)

2. Orville tells Herzberg that the longest flight was 59 seconds instead of 57. Orville states that 57 seconds was an error in the Boys' Life article in his letter to Herzog in 1942, but this seems fairly inconsequential. The statistics the Wrights reported were mostly estimates, anyway.

3. Back to Dayton when and why? Orville claims he went all the way back to Dayton from Kitty Hawk in December to get a new propellor shaft after it was broken in Wilbur's first attempt at powered flight. (Boys' Life, Sept, 1914 ,Page 3, column 3). Impossible if, according to the two brothers' original stories, the first attempt was on December 14 and the last four were on the 17th.  There wasn't  enough time to travel to Dayton and back between the 14th and the 17th. Orville did return to Dayton on November 30 to get new propeller shafts made and started back on December 9, according to Fred Howard's biography, "Wilbur and Orville," but the trip wasn't because Wilbur damaged the shafts in the first flight attempt.  It was because the shafts weren't strong enough to withstand the vibration of the engine, according to Howard.

4. That pesky question again: hills or level ground?? Orville says in Boys' Life that he couldn't attempt a turn on the "flights" because the hills wouldn't permit it. Here's the quotation:

 "Then after a few secondary adjustments, I took my seat for the second time. By now I had learned something about the controls, and about how a machine acted during a sustained (sic) flight, and I managed to keep in the air for fifty seven seconds. I couldn't turn, of course--the hills wouldn't permit that--but I had no great difficulty in handling it."

The hills? What hills? The Wrights claimed that all of their flights December 17 were made from level ground and the only "hill" they mentioned was the small 'hummock" that was struck and ended the longest flight. Either there were no hills, and Orville's statement here is incorrect as well as the witnesses' statements that the Wrights took off from the hill, or the telegram pictured below, the photos we have been presented by the Wrights, and subsequent statements have been falsified.

Telegram the Wrights sent their father Dec. 17 states they took off from level ground

This photo is supposedly of the 1903 flyer on its last flight of 852 feet that Orville claimed he made in Boys' Life. Note no hills in sight and the take off rail on level ground. Note also level ground in the autographed "first flight" picture above.

According to Fred Culick,of the AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) and Ret. Professor of Cal Tech, the Wrights never attempted any turns in 1903; because they were too busy fighting to keep their plane in the air. If no turns were made, then the flights may have been capable of being controlled, but how can we determine that? Further, if the flights were initiated from a hill (assisted by gravity), then they would not be considered sustained.The ultimate question is: were the flights powered, controlled, and sustained as we have been taught in the historical literature? Or not?

5. "Witness" Johnny Moore's age. Orville says that Johnny Moore, who was declared by the Wrights as one of the five witnesses to "the first flight in history," was a "small boy of about thirteen or fourteen," who happened to wander on to the site. Shouldn't the official witnesses of such an important event have a few credentials? Especially since the Wrights' claims later created such hardship on other aviation pioneers in the form of lawsuits, injunctions, expenses, and reputations? 

According to the U. S. Census, Johnny Moore was actually eighteen years old in 1903, but was considered "slow," according to various other accounts. . 

Other statements in the Boys' Life article seem intended to make Orville and his brother appear bigger and more knowledgeable than they really were.

6. Orville's long narration that the great pioneer Otto Lilienthal's tables of lift and drag were wrong is not true.  Lilienthal 1848-1896 was a German pioneer aviator who had done hundreds of glides before he died . He was just ready to install an engine on his glider for powered flight when he was killed. Lilienthal was meticulous in creating tables of lift and drag from his gliding tests.The Wright brothers tried to use Lilienthals' tables to develop their early gliders, but found when they applied the tables to their machines there wasn't as much lift as the tables seemed to predict.  The Wrights soon came to the conclusion that Lilienthal's tables were wrong.

.

7. Orville also states that the aviation Pioneer Octave Chanute didn't understand that Lilienthal's tables were wrong or why.

 The great aviation pioneer Chanute, who had died in 1910 after enormous contributions to the development of early aviation is presented as less knowledgeable than the Wrights here and in subsequent documents. That is unacceptable. The Wrights were the amateurs at the time, not Chanute. It was Chanute's and Lilienthal's glider research and Chanute's system of trussing that the Wrights used in their gliders and planes. Chanute had provided a great deal of assistance and support  to the Wrights and other early pioneers. He believed that progress in aviation should be shared and he helped to disseminate new information. The Wrights had studied Chanute's 1894 book "Progress in Flying Machines" to learn about the state of the art. Wilbur wrote to him and asked him questions in his letters when he ran into problems. See early Chanute collection digitized in the Library of Congress.

Today we know that the Wrights' problems in 1901 weren't the inaccuracy of Lilienthal's tables as many so called historians like to parrot -- it was the Wrights' naive interpretation of them that was wrong. See John David Anderson, Jr. "A History of Aerodynamics," 1997, pp. 210-12. (The Wrights' early documents display ignorance and perhaps already a downright arrogance). But Orville's statements about the "inaccuracies" of Lilienthal and Chanute's lack of understanding haven't been given up and are repeated in various forms by historians time and time again. Orville continued to make that claim in his approved "biography," The Wright Brothers,"" by Fred Kelly first published in 1943. Also please refer to "How We Invented the Airplane" by Orville Wright, edited by Fred C. Kelly, copyright 1953.

 Note that Fred Culick of the AIAA attempts to show that that the Wright brothers came to accept the tables. Culick quotes these statements from Wilbur's diary dated way back in 1901 and 1902. (link pending)

Excerpts from  Wilbur Wright's diary

But Orville continues to declare the tables wrong--and that he and Wilbur discovered the correct figures through their wind tunnel experiments of 1901. However, there is enough evidence now to challenge these claims by the Wrights.

As I stated in the previous post, either the Boys' Life magazine is unaware of the many errors in it, or it doesn't feel it's important to correct them. ( It would seem that some are just too obvious to miss.) I believe the editors should correct them in the best tradition of the Boy Scouts' first law.

And as I've stated, it's particularly troubling to confront such manipulation of the the truth in the Wright saga when we begin to examine in future posts their attempts and often successes in belittling, maligning, and discrediting other great pioneer aviators. One successful example of defamation: Orville's claim that one of our greatest aviation pioneers, Glenn Hammond Curtiss was guilty of fraud and collusion. Curtiss was respected and beloved in his lifetime. He is well described in another issue of Boys' Life, August, 1961, pp. 21, 51-53, "The Boy Who Fixed Things." Other examples are Gustave Whitehead, John Montgomery (both of whom were accused of "mythical flights," Dr. Albert Zahm, Charles Doolittle Walcott, Secretary of the Smithsonian; Charles Manly, and Edward Chalmers Huffaker. These great men were among those belittled, called liars, and/or discredited. Links to my claims will be provided as time permits.

Presented below is the complete letter that Orville wrote to Mr. Max Herzberg in reply to a request to use the Boys Life article in an anthology: Please refer to The Library of Congress digital collection. (link pending)

  

Letter to Herzog where Orville admits some errors, Library of Congress

Complete letter from Orville Wright to Mr.  Herzog, below, in which he calls the editor of "The Independent" dishonest and deceptive for not fully and openly correcting an article about the Wrights. However, the editor of "The Independent" did indeed apologize in writing more than once, and this fact is obviously not acknowledged by Orville.

(See footnote, previous post.) Letter from the Library of Congress digital  collection.

                         
        To be continued...